INTERPOL is the world’s largest international police organization, with 190 member countries. Our role is to enable police around the world to work together to make the world a safer place. Our high-tech infrastructure of technical and operational support helps meet the growing challenges of fighting crime in the 21st century.

This is where you will find the latest news and multimedia from INTERPOL. Read our news stories and speeches; see the Organization in action through videos and photo galleries; and download our fact sheets, brochures and annual reports.

Our global police communications channels and internationally recognized alert systems allow police around the world to share data instantly and securely. A 24-hour contact point and specialized teams provide targeted support to serious crime or disaster incidents.

Internet crimes

Given the global reach of the Internet, the posting of child abuse material online constitutes an international crime and demands concerted collaboration worldwide.

At INTERPOL, we work very closely with many partners to increase awareness, enforce laws and to prevent crime in this area. We also work with organizations such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to improve safety and security online.

We run many initiatives,including the development of a victim identification network and the coordination of international operations.

Identifying videos of abuse

To aid law enforcement in fighting crimes against children, a new forensic technology has been developed to assist in finding and removing the most explicit videos of child sexual exploitation from the Internet.

Created by online security technology provider Friend MTS and donated to the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, the technology generates a unique digital signature, like a fingerprint, of child sexual abuse videos, which can then be compared with other videos to detect matching ‘fingerprints’.

Once a video is given a ‘fingerprint’, police and Internet service providers can quickly and easily identify full or partial copies of the video wherever they are hosted online. This enables online providers to filter and block known child sexual abuse material, and helps police to investigate cases of online child abuse more efficiently.